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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27770296">The Asset</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStingingFish/pseuds/TheStingingFish'>TheStingingFish</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mandalorian (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fluff, Gen, Introspection, a little angst maybe, chapter 13 spoilers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:14:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,903</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27770296</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStingingFish/pseuds/TheStingingFish</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>On Calodan, both Din and child do some thinking.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) &amp; Din Djarin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>229</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Child</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Ahsoka</em>
</p>
<p>That was her name. He felt her, not with his hands but like he used to <em>feel</em> the others. A long time ago. He felt her name, <em>Ahsoka</em>. He felt <em>you’re safe here</em> and <em>I was raised in the Temple too</em>.</p>
<p><br/>He didn’t <em>feel</em> his dad that way. That was different. That was safe too but dad had never been to the temple. He didn’t <em>feel</em> the same way Ahsoka did. </p>
<p><br/><em>Grogu</em> he thought. He had thought that lots of times. He wished he could say it with his mouth, to tell dad. He didn’t mind being called kid but he wished it all the same. He used to be better at talking with his mouth but that was long before dad came and became dad. </p>
<p><br/>He looked over and saw him. The light reflected off his armor. The armor was very important, and now in the dark forest it let him see dad. </p>
<p><br/><em>You care for him very much</em>. And Ahsoka showed him her masters, and how she cared for them and missed them. She showed him an ending, a holo from a human master saying to not ever come back to the temple. </p>
<p><br/>He tried not to show her the dark time, after the temple. She had her own dark time, too. He looked again and saw dad, still walking. He was scared? Or sad. It didn’t make sense. There were no bad guys nearby. Not now. And that was the only time dad felt like that.</p>
<p><br/>She thought about a garden in the temple, the biggest one, with the biggest waterfall. Grogu remembered it and the way the mist tickled his ears, and the big fruit trees nearby. He remembered someone holding him up high and looking down so far at the fat little fish swimming in the water. He remembered the way the fish and the water and the air and the spray and the fruit trees all felt together. </p>
<p><br/>They remembered together for a while, and he realized he had stopped checking that dad was still there, but he was. He could feel that, without needing to look. </p>
<p><br/>Grogu remembered the first time he saw him. Before he was dad, when there lots of noise and bright light, and a droid, and then the droid was gone and there was just him, not dad yet. And then it felt like he couldn’t stop remembering all their adventures, and watching the stars from the ship, and the time he got to pet the lothcat, and his friends on Sorgan, and how sometimes it got scary but dad was always there and made sure he was safe. </p>
<p><br/>Ahsoka thought it was very good that he had been found by dad. Maybe it was what the Force wanted, that he was found by someone who would keep him safe.</p>
<p><br/>Grogu thought he felt safe with dad even though he didn’t <em>feel</em> like Ahsoka. He liked meeting the baby on the water planet but he had missed dad then, when they were apart. Usually they were together. He liked being together. </p>
<p><br/>Ahsoka remembered how she used to call her master Skyguy, and he used to call her Snips, and she wondered if he would like her to tell dad his name. </p>
<p>He would like that. He wondered how it would sound. </p>
<p><br/>They remembered together for a while and felt. He felt warm even though the air was cool. He liked having someone who felt. But he was tired, too, and soon she asked if they should go get his dad and he thought yes. <em>Feeling</em> like that made him sleepy even though it was nice. </p>
<p><br/>Dad didn’t understand what it meant to <em>feel</em> like they did and Ahsoka told him. He still didn’t understand but that didn’t matter. Dad was good at learning things even if it took him a while. </p>
<p><br/>And then, Dad said, “Grogu?”</p>
<p><br/>And Ahsoka said, “That’s his name.”</p>
<p><br/>And even though dad couldn’t <em>feel</em>, Grogu could feel him, and it was like when things were bad and scary but the opposite. It was warm and safe and good. It was like on Sorgan with the ponds and mud, but more and bigger and faster. It was like being safe in his pram, but he wasn't alone and it wasn't dark. It felt like they were together and everything was good.</p>
<p><br/>“Grogu,” Dad said again, and Grogu squeaked in happiness. Dad knew his name now and it felt like he would never be dark and alone again. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Din</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They were just sitting there. </p><p><br/>It felt like it had been hours but Din knew it had been maybe ten minutes at most. The jedi and the kid were just sitting there, looking at each other. They weren’t motionless, just sitting still and looking at each other. Whatever it was it had to be some sort of magic. He didn’t like not knowing what was happening, but he didn’t seem to have a choice. He did what the jedi asked and gave them space, but he wasn’t going to get out of earshot. Or blaster range. </p><p><br/>He paced. It wasn’t something he was usually inclined to do, but usually, he had something else to do. Now all he had to do was wait, as the jedi and his child — <br/>— <em>The child</em>, he corrected himself. Not his. He’d never been his child. He’d been a bounty, and then he’d been…something else. Din didn’t know what, exactly, but not his child. He was just a kid. Din never would have taken the job if he’d known it was a child. He was just trying to make right what had been previously made wrong, that was it. </p><p><br/><em>Dank ferrik</em>, he was going to miss having the kid around. </p><p><br/>Everything would be easier if the kid stayed with the jedi, though. When he stayed with her. He knew he had a New Republic warrant, which was more than enough complication. Not having a child too small to fight <em>and</em> wanted by the Imperials with him would remove a lot of difficulty from his life. Fewer difficulties was always better. His ability to minimize complications was a big part of why he was even still alive. So why did he feel...however it was he felt?</p><p>He didn’t even know what he was feeling, but it wasn’t good. </p><p><br/>This had been his mission all along. Finding the kid’s species had been a non-starter. No one had ever seen anything like him before. Finding a jedi hadn’t exactly been easy, but there they were, the kid and the jedi, sitting on two low rocks, silently looking at each other.</p><p> <br/>Usually he felt good when he finished a job, but the kid seemed to be the exception to that. </p><p><br/>He paced until he got tired of pacing, and then he sat down on a tree stump, and he waited, and he tried not to think about taking off with both rear seats in the cockpit empty. </p><p><br/>Finally. <em>Finally</em>, the Jedi stood up. She picked up the child and for a few seconds they just stood there, silhouettes in the moonlight. </p><p><br/>He didn’t remember the first time he’d held the kid like that but he knew there had been a first time. The first time he hadn’t been the asset. </p><p><br/>A bounty did not have a name, or a past, or an identity beyond being the target of the job. They were an asset, a good to be collected and handed over in exchange for payment. It was simpler that way, and simpler was good.</p><p><br/>Sometime about a year ago, the kid had started being the kid. There was an identity beyond that which was at the end of a tracker fob. And returning him to his people had never been just a job. Din wasn’t sure what it was. There was no neat category to put it in. Not without a covert to go back to, not with so many questions about Bo-Katan still swirling in his mind. And somehow, not with the kid, giggling as he hid in unlikely spaces on the Crest and scaring the life out of Din as he searched for the newest hiding spot. The child defied all attempts at categorization, in more ways than one. </p><p><br/>“Is he speaking? Do you understand him?” he asked. Maybe it was a dumb question, because what else would they have been doing for so long? But they hadn’t been speaking. He’d never heard the kid speak a word of basic nor any other recognizable language, just babble, and he hadn’t even heard the kid doing that as he’d sat looking at the jedi. </p><p><br/>“In a way,” she said. “Grogu and I can feel each others thoughts.” </p><p><br/>That was a lot of surprisingly information crammed into a very calm and short sentence, but — “Grogu?” </p><p><br/>The kid whipped his head around with a coo, and looked up at him, and Din felt something start to ache in his chest. </p><p><br/>“Yes,” the jedi said. “That’s his name.” </p><p><br/>He shifted his weight, suddenly uncomfortable in his own body. </p><p><br/>Of course the child had a name. </p><p><br/>Of course this strange, magical child had a name.</p><p><br/>Of course he had an identity. He had never been just an asset. Din had known, from the moment he saw him, that he was a child. Din had known just hours after that that he had a personality, a sense of self, an identity. At the time, he’d ignored it. Just another bounty. At the time he had tried to think of nothing but that beskar, dozens of ingots of it, returning to his people. After that, he thought of it as nothing more than rescuing a child from the grips of the Empire. And then, at some point after that…</p><p><br/>“Grogu,” he said again, testing it out. And again, the child looked up at him and this time he saw that Din understood, and the joy on his face made the ache in Din’s chest even worse. It echoed like a drum, against his ribs. Against his heart. </p><p><br/>He stepped backwards and sat down as the jedi told him what she’d learned. Coruscant. The Jedi temple. And then, dark. Alone. </p><p><br/>Din thought back to the dusty compound on Arvala 7. To the pram closed up and hidden in a dark corner in a dark closed up hall. How everyone in the compound fought to keep him and the droid out, but when it came down to it the kid was left there, alone. He wondered how long he had been alone in that pram. </p><p><br/>He had just seen the jedi, holding the child with fondness and affection. He had done so himself, and so had others. Greef. Peli. Omera. Even Cara. But he wondered, about that first time he’d held the kid like that, not just lifting him but <em>holding</em> him, and how long it had been before that since anyone else had held him. Days? Months? Years? </p><p><br/>It wouldn't ever be like that again. <em>That </em>was his mission. That this beautiful and complicated and troublesome child, swallower of frogs and eggs, all-time champion of Razor Crest Hide And Seek, would never go a day without being held. </p><p><br/>If this was the end, if their paths parted ways here, then at least Din would know where to find him. And he would know who to look for: the jedi, and his son, Grogu. </p>
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